open me carefully after woman diving underwater with white dress, Engin Akyurt (Turkey) 2012 Although you hide in the ebb and flowof the pale tide when the moon has set, […]
Thomas Zimmerman – Fellow Travelers
Fellow Travelers These sonnets, footnotes to the memoirs weconstruct in dreams, sustain us on the path,however brambled, stony, wind-lashed, bee-loud, wild-flowered it might be. We do the math:five beats, ten syllables, for fourteen lines.It’s walking, breathing, chanting, tapping beatson fingers or inside the mind, cool pinesor sun-struck eagles overhead, the bleatsof sheep, the cricket-chirp for […]
Robert Halleck – Bourbon Dark Sea
Bourbon Dark Sea I ignore the signthat says the beach closesat sunset as I sit on a rock with a half bottleof ginger ale toppedwith bourbon. Eveningmist cut by passing carlights gives a lambentglow to a sea rising andfalling in gentle waves.Tonight is mine. I amignoring all signs: noalcohol, no dogs, nofires. My shepherd isshadowed […]
Susie Gharib – Glaswegian Phantoms
Glaswegian Phantoms I stand beneath the Autumn treethat shades the entrance to our apartmented buildingand see the spires of a city across the seas. My tongue is numb with the bitterness of years.A breeze that is severing agitated leavesreshuffles the order of my inner visions. I breathe. I roam those roads and matted streets.No tongues […]
Dante Novario – Prayers to the Shower Drain
Bio Dante Novario is an internationally published writer who lives in Louisville, KY where he works as a therapist with special needs individuals. His writing has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Firewords Magazine, ANGLES, KAIROS, Thin Air Magazine, Still: The Journal, Ghost City Press, Jersey Devil Press, The River Magazine and others. His poetry […]
Troy Schoultz – Rock On
Rock On It’s ninety degrees in the VIP area which resemblesRecess for prisoners of war. My buddy of thirty years isAn alcoholic Peter Pan, torn, faded Iron Maiden shirtChain-smoking, two four packs of Milwaukee’s Best tall boys to the windAnd a twenty borrowed from me that I’ll never see change for.I’m worn down with a […]
Ben Nardolilli – Dissertation, Defenestration, and Defense
Dissertation, Defenestration, and Defense Engaging in dialogues with my walls,occasionally shouting at the shadows,who is the Socrates here, who is the Plato? There is humor, there is cleverness,there is a mind in the room that seemsto be the most pre-eminent one in creation Does it dare go outside, and spoilthe conversation between the echoes here?the […]
John Tustin – Single Stone
Single Stone The waves shatter upon the stone.The stone that sits mightily In its dense superiority.The waves come and they come,These endless waves that are but many drops of waterComing together to butt upUpon this single stone.The water is endless. The waves come and come.The stone sits resolute in place. The waves shatter upon the […]
Thomas Elson – Red Napkin
The dinner – turkey, latkes, dressing, gravy, and my wife’s cauliflower and black olive salad – impeccably set upon a red tablecloth with white lace placemats – reminded me of the red cassock and white lace chasuble I had worn decades before as an altar boy at midnight Mass. Resting on the lace placemats were […]
Robert Beveridge – Godly Beings
Godly Beings so it’s a week later and I sit here with a bottle and a candle and think about how you used to make fun of me for my Southern Comfort and Diet Coke (no ice) while you did shots of Jack, and how we always ended up with your hair in a knot […]